Getting the most out of SSMs

What are special study modules (SSMs) and how can you get the best out of this part of the medical student timetable? In 1992, the UK General Medical Council produced a historic document called Tomorrow's Doctors.1 It recommended that students should be allowed to follow their own interests beyond the core curriculum, and so SSMs were born. Since then they have become part of the furniture of the medical course and have really taken hold.

Nationwide, the range of courses is mouthwatering. But how, for example, do you decide between a placement with a maxillofacial surgery team or a specialist infectious diseases unit? And would you get either if you applied? Eleven medical students from around the United Kingdom filled me in.

SSMs offered include courses on health care for refugees, medicine and the police, medicine in the classical world, dermatology in Denmark, sports medicine, and autopsy and histopathological correlation. At one London school, medical students can take themselves off to the Slade School of Art for life drawing classes.

Popular choices get snapped up quickly, but really resourceful students design their own. Do it yourself SSMs include a course in Arabic and a different student researched the needs of sex workers with drug addiction.

Most students seem to think that SSMs are a good thing, but many have reservations. Some feel that excessive time spent in this type of learning could be detrimental to core subjects, nuts and bolts teaching, and clinical experience that will make medical students competent doctors.